10

"America," said Steenhold. "Certainly America. Right away. You come with me to America and we'll run round a bit. We can manage a fortnight there. Start Friday, New York Saturday. Partly we'll bus about the country and partly we'll get special planes. I've got it all figured out. There's one or two lads I'd like you to see, and a few bunches I'd like to hear you talk to. There's things brewing there.

"You can talk to the news–hawks. We'll give you a press…Tell 'em all how you did in Bohun; he's just the sort of thing Americans detest…

"I shall love to show you America.

"All you lousy Europeans underrate America. It under–rates itself. We've been shaping history for a century. Ironclads we invented. We opened up Japan, but you British played us crooked on that. You've always been crooked on Japan and China with us. But never mind that now. We started flying—and we started the popular motor–car. And who invented the machine–gun? Who started big business and mass production? What would have happened to Soviet Russia if it hadn't had American notions? If it hadn't had Americanised Russians to start it? Soviet Russia nearly got away with things, simply thanks to America."

"The British Museum Reading Room had a hand in that," said Rud. "Marx read there, Lenin read there. Litvinov."

"That old gas reservoir! Trotsky was American–trained. And do you know what was the matter with Stalin? He knew nothing real about America…What's the trouble with Russia now? It's lost its American kick. It's ceasing to ventilate. It's going back to Asia. Still I don't want to humiliate you Britishers too much. There's a sort of tenderness—in every American. But there they are, the Russians, de–Americanised and consequently stuck.

"What they want in Moscow," said Steenhold, expanding his theme, "is derision, healthy derision. At first under Lenin, I'm told, there was some."

"Where there is no derision the people perish," said Chiffan.

"Now who said that?" asked Steenhold, always anxious to check his quotations. "It sounds familiar."

"I said it," said Chiffan. "Get on with your suggestions."